1.The Lip and Eye Remover
(brand name on bottle of makeup removal cream)
E-MAIL TO CLINT EASTWOOD
Dear Clint,
Its Jimm here, your Thai friend down on the Gulf of Siam. Merry Christmas to you and your family. Its been a while since I wrote. I hope you are well. My sister (aka brother) Sissi and I noticed that you recently fired your personal assistant, Liced. We hope it had nothing to do with us hacking into her e-mail account and accessing private information about Malpaso Productions. Liced was a victim in all this and was virtually blackmailed into helping us. I hope you can forgive her and consider rehiring her. As we now have nobody “on the inside,” Im sending this package to your private post office box. I promise this is the last confidential information we will take advantage of. The enclosed DVD contains recorded footage of our very exciting pursuit of Burmese slaves on the Gulf of Thailand. As a live Internet feed, we attracted 1.3 million viewers for the event. Sissi and I are certain every one of them would gladly fork out fifteen dollars a ticket and watch it as a cinematic experience, especially if Natalie Portman played me. But I bow to you on casting decisions on this one. Ive taken the liberty of wrapping the DVD in my screenplay adaptation of the events.
Clint, Im sure youll recall that this is the fourth screenplay Ive sent you, each one more thrilling than the last. Although I havent heard back from you personally (not complaining. Old age is catching up with all of us), we did intercept a message from one of your editorial reviewers that referred to serious doubts about the quality of characterization in our second manuscript. First, it was heartening to know you bothered to have our work assessed internally. But we feel a need to address this issue, especially as the characters in the second screenplay are my family members. We considered the comments to be unfairly cruel and I would like to take your editor to task.
Our mother, Mair, is perhaps starting to feel the teeth of dementia nibbling at her heels, but that doesnt make her “nutty as a fruitcake” as your reviewer described her. She has long coherent periods which do not involve wearing odd shoes or buying secondhand Cosplay rabbit suits on eBay. (Shes only done that once. She wanted to bond with the dogs.) Between you and me, she was a “flower child” for several years and did spend a good deal of time in the jungle with anti-system elements and there may have been intoxicants ingested at that time. But Id like to see them as turning her into a more whole and mellow human rather than “a fruit basket.”
The older gentleman who was described as “unlikable and two-dimensional” is, in fact, my Grandad Jah. I have to agree with the “unlikable” part, but Grandad, I have to strongly protest, is not lacking a dimension. At the very most, he may be short a sense or two. But his absence of humor and social etiquette is more than made up for by his innate skill as an investigator. One would imagine that forty years spent in the Thai Police Force, where the focus is on amassing great wealth rather than putting oneself in harms way, might erase a mans policing instincts. But Grandad Jah has uncanny abilities and is as honest as the day is long (which explains why hes still penniless).
This brings me to my brother, Arnon, known affectionately as Arny, after his hero Arnold Schwarzenegger. Had we not followed our mother to the northernmost southern province in Thailand for reasons that Ive only recently come to understand, he would undoubtedly have been this years Mr. Chiang Mai Body Beautiful. So, the comment, “This character has no personality, no abilities and absolutely no purpose for being in the story,” is a bit like complaining that Moby Dick didnt have much of a speaking part. Everything revolves around Arny. Hes the sounding board for my stories, and even though he wouldnt harm a fly, he is my protector. In the last screenplay youll notice that he takes on a boatload of pirates all by himself. I may have exaggerated the number of opponents he faced and the injuries he inflicted, but he did make a good account of himself in front of his fiancée.
The “Impossible Hermaphrodite Queen,” is my “sister,” Sissi, who was neither born with conflicting organs nor crowned. If your reviewer had bothered to read the character sheet, he or she would know this. I feel he or she was just being smart in an attempt to impress you. Im sure you have a lot of people sucking up to you. Sissi is transgender and has a medical certificate to prove it. With reference to her computer skills, the Malpaso threat to “chase you down and run you out of business,” was very dramatic, but Im sure you realize shes un-chasable and un-runoutable. Our hacking has, youll have to agree, been very friendly, and even though your accounts were wide open to access and abuse, we have not robbed you blind. And Im sure that when were sitting down at the negotiating table discussing the finer details of our first movie deal, well all look back at these days and laugh.
Which brings me to me, Jimm Juree. I should perhaps have been the most offended and hurt by your reviewers comments, but I am traditionally a punching bag for abuse. As I am only thirty four and have never been in domestic service, I was forced to look up some other meaning for “old maid.” Once found, I am obliged to protest most strongly. I was married and had conjugal moments with my husband during our three-point-seven years of marriage. At least once a month, if I remember rightly. Not a record, I agree, but enough to disqualify me from being “a woman who has not formed a human pair bond by the time she is approaching or has reached menopause and the end of her reproductive lifespan.” (Wikipedia.) My husband had been desperate to appear married and I was desperate to be asked, which may not make us a pair bond, but its a precedent. I have a good ten years of premenopausal hunting left in me.
I also take objection to the expression “a very unlikely Thai female character.” If by this he means I dont work in a rice paddy or a go-go bar, am not listed on any Internet dating sites, and do not walk with tiny steps or speak demurely when in male company, then, fair enough, hes got me. But, in fact, we Thai gals were given admittance to the twenty-first century. Were allowed to chat online and study overseas and speak foreign languages. Would you believe it? We can even run companies and stand for parliament. No, Clint, my hero, I dont believe for a second that you want movie scripts full of stereotypes, and Im sure you sent that confidential internal memo to the trash where it belonged.
Well, hey. You probably cant wait to get your teeth into the enclosed DVD and manuscript, so Ill stop here. As Sissi and I are sure the North American postal service is all but redundant since the advent of e-mails, we decided to increase the odds of you receiving this package by making thirty-seven copies, which we are sending to your work colleagues, some senior shareholders of the company, friends and family. In each one we have included a small plant pot mat hand-embroidered by Hmong hill-tribe women in the north. As I say, when were all raking in the dollars from our first movie collaboration, youll stop seeing this as harassment and appreciate the charming side of it. Somewhere on the directors voice-over on the DVD youll mention how annoyed you were at first but that those goddamned crazy Thais had one hell of a product.
Have a great Christmas and may Santa bring you yet another Oscar.
Love, Jimm and Sissi
(Postal address withheld but you have our e-mail)
Copyright © 2013 by Colin Cotterill